A Preliminary Study on the First Selected Translation of the

Book of Poetry in French

Jiang Xiangyan, Associate Professor, at International College of Chinese Studies,

East China Normal University, China

Abstract : This essay attemps to have a preliminary analysis of eight poems from the Book of
Poetry translated into French by the French Jesuit Joseph de Prémare in early 18th century, and to
explore how the religious culture in ancient China symbioses with the Christian theology.

List of tables : Table one : page 5

Table two : page 6

Introduction
When the French Jesuit Joseph de Prémare (1660-1736) stayed in China, he translated eight
poems from The Book of Poetry and published them for the first time on Déscription
Géographique, historique, chronologique, politique et physique de de l’Empire de la Chine et de
la Tartarie Chinoise ① edited by Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (1674-1743). This is the earliest
translation of the verses in Book of Poetry in European languages, and is also one of the very
limited publications in French that Prémare published in Europe in his life, among which the
French version of the Chinese tragedy le Petit Orphelin de la Maison de Tchao 《 ( 赵氏孤儿》) also
published in Du Halde’s work, is the most famous one. Scholars have made a lot of studies on le
Petit Orphelin de la Maison de Tchao②, while little has been done to the eight translated poems
from The Book of Poetry.③
The eight poems translated are Ching Chih(《敬之》) and T‘ien Tso（《天作》） from
Sacrificial Odes of Chou（ 《周颂》 ）, Huang I（《皇矣》 ）, I（《抑》 ）, Chan Ang（ 《瞻卬》） ，Pan
(《板》) and Tang（ 《荡》 ） from Greater Odes of the Kingdom（《大雅》）, and Chêng Yüeh（《正
月》 ）from Minor Odes of the Kingdom（ 《小雅》）④. One notable fact is that among the eight poems,
five are from Greater Odes of the Kingdom, two from Sacrificial Odes of Chou and one from
Minor Odes of the Kingdom, not one is selected from Lessons from the States（ 《国风》 ）which is a
record of the social customs and habits of the folk of different states of the time.
This article attempts to discuss how the French Jesuit scholar Prémare translated the eight

①
Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, Déscription Géographique, historique, chronologique, politique et phisique de I'
Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinoise (Paris : La Hare, 1736), Tome Second, 308-317.
②
Shouyi Chen, “the orphan of Family Zhao in the European Literature in the eighteenth century”, Journal of
Lingnan, Volume One (1929) : 114-146 ; Fan Xiheng, Voltair et Tsi Kiun-Tsiang--- Etude sur l’Orphlin de la Chine,
a Ph.D thesis at the Department of Latin Language at KU Leuven (Leuven, 1932); Meng Hua, Voltaire and
Confucius(Beijing : Xinhua Publishing, 1993)
③
Linjuan Liu, “On the early translation of the Book of Songs in France in the eighteenth and nighteenth
centuries” ; Xinxin Du, “A Preliminary Study to the Prémare’s Translation of the Book of Songs”, Taibei :
Newsletter of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy (2012) : 43-71.
④
James Legge, trans. The Book of Poetry (Hawaii : Evinity Publishing Inc, 2009),
http://sacred-texts.com/cfu/bop/index.htm
1
odes, and to see what was strengthened, what was transplanted and displaced in the translation ;
what was the translations of the concepts like Tien (天), Haotien （昊天） , Shangdi（上帝）and their
theological significance both in the original and the translated texts.
I. Subject : King and kingship
The eight translated odes do not appear in the same order as in The Book of Poetry(for
example, the first translated ode Ching Chih was the last one among the eight in the original text),
while they do obey certain order: the order of the historical process of the Chou kingdom. In the
first ode Ching Chih, the young king adjusts his relation with Heaven and his ministers; he
commands himself to pay reverence to Tien (“敬天”) and asks his ministers to assist him in
fullfilling the ruling duty. The second ode T‘ien Tso and the third one Huang I commemorate the
sacred kings of the Chou kingdom : the former narrates kings of different generations built road
for the Qi Mountain, and the latter narrates the epic of the Chou kingdom. From the fourth ode I ,
the tone of the odes turn to abmonishing, criticizing and lamenting the ruling of the kingdom. I is
to satirize King Ping who indulged himself in wine and women and ruined his government; the
fifth ode Chan Ang criticizes King You who expelled his loyal ministers and spoiled his concubine
Pao Ssŭ; the sixth ode Chêng Yüeh laments over the misery of the kingdom; the seventh and
eighth odes Pan and Tang end with the ruin of the kingdom. In modern Chinese, Pan and Tang
consitute a phrase Pantang（板荡）which signifies ruling disorder and social turbulance.
In this historical process of the Chou kingdom manifested in the eight odes, either in odes 1
to 3 of worshipping and praising the king, or in odes 4 to 8 of abmonishing and satirizing the king,
King is present from the very beginning to the end as the main character, and the ruling of the
kingdom is the uniform subject. Thus the eight translated odes seem to have constitued a
self-sufficient and rotative whole which indicates the purpose of Prémare in translating these eight
odes, i.e., to demonstrate a complicated historical process and a centralized subject.
In his translation, the subject of king and kingship is also displayed in the translation of the
title of the odes. In the original texts, the title of each ode is the first two words of the ode ; on the
contrary to this, Prémare gave a new title to each ode according to its content. The titles of the
eight translated odes are as follows:
1. Ching Chih : Un jeune Roi prie ses Ministres de l’instruire
2. T‘ien Tso : A la louange de Ven vang
3. Huang I : àla louange du même
4. I : Conseils donnez àun Roi
5. Chan Ang : Sur la perte du genre humain
6. Chêng Yüeh : Lamentations sur les misères du genre humain
7. Pan : Exhortation
8. Tang : Avis au Roy
In the French titles of the eight odes, besides the fifth, the sixth and the seventh ones, there
appear the title King（Roi, vang：王）. Although the word King is absent in the titles of the fifth, the
sixth and the seventh odes, the reappearance of the key word King in the eighth ode indicates that
the translation of the eight odes was a whole with King and kingship as its subject.
In the translated odes about kings, King Ven(文王) was the most prominent one. The
translator entitled the second ode T‘ien Tso and the third one in the name of King Ven, which was
not the same as that in the original odes. As in Huang I, there are lots of praises of King Wang Chi
（王季）, father of King Ven :

2
 “The state thus founded, God prepared the king,
And he through Ta-pai's flight from Chi shall spring.
Ta’s son was Chi, whose praises now I sing.

A younger brother's heart within him glowed;

He to his elder rendered all he owed,
And when he fled, a patriot's heart Chi showed.

So through his course his brother's flight appeared

With glory crowned. Head of the name, Chi reared
The throne to which Chou's way erelong was cleared.

Gifted was Chi by God with wisdom high.

His judgments true drew on him every eye;
With silent growth his fame spread far and nigh.

Most ken, most wise, to yield or to command,

And sway to exercise throughout the land,
He was ’twixt king and chief a powerful band. ① ”

While in Prémare’s translation, all these praises go to King Ven（Ven vang） :

“C’est l’ouvrage du Très-Haut; il a mis le cadet à la place de l’aîné: il n’y a que Ven
vang, dont le cœur sache aimer ses frères: il faut tout leur bonheur & toute leur gloire: le
Seigneur l’a comblé de ses biens, & lui a donné tout l’Univers pour récompense.
Le Seigneur pénétre dans le cœur de Ven vang & il y trouve une vertu secrette &
inexplicable, dont l’odeur se repand par tout. C’est un merveilleux assemblage de ses dons
les plus précieux; l’intelligence pour regler tout; la sagesse pour éclairer tout; la science, pour
enseigner; le Conseil, pour gouverner; la pieté& la douceur, pour le faire aimer; la force & la
majesté, pour se faire craindre; une grace enfin & un charme qui lui attire tous les cœurs:
vertus toujours les mêmes, & incapables de changer. C’est comme un appanage qu’il a reçû
de Très-Haut: c’est un bonheur qu’il a répandu sur sa postérité. ”②

Did Prémare misunderstood the ode ? Or he intentionally did so ? Whatever the truth may be,
a result of such translation is that the image of an ideal King Ven was strengthened. It goes to such
an effect that when nearly fifty years after its publication in Du Halde’s work, the German poet
Goethe read it and acclaimed the ancient Chinese king : “Oven Ouang!”③ .
But our analysis does not stop here. What does King in these eight odes signify ? Is it a
metaphor ? Does Prémare’King only refer to the ruler of the earthly world ? We all know that
King is the address to Jehovah in Bible: “the Lord is King forever” (Psalms 9:7); “the Lord is
seated as King forever”(Psalms 29:10); “the King of glory” (Psalms 24 : 8、9、10). We have reason
to believe that Prémare emphasizes King in his translation to suggest the creator and governor of

①
James Legge, trans. The Book of Poetry.
②
Du Halde, Déscription Géographique… de I' Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinoise, 310.
③
Yong Zhao, Qianlong Zhao eds. Goethe (Shenyang : Liaohai Publishing, 1998), 100.
3
the universe, King of Kings, God of Christianity.
A further analysis to the first ode Ching Chih also leads us to believe that Prémare
reconstructed the eight odes in accordance with the Christian doctrines and theological principles.
Ching Chih made it clear that paying reverence to Tien(敬天) is the first and most important rule
that a king should obey. The confucian scholar Zhu Xi of the Song dynasty explained that the
ministers suggested the Way of Tien（天道） to King Cheng. With his explanation the divinity of
Tien（天） was secularised, and the religious and theological tendency in ancient China has turned
to the ethical tendency of the Li school. While things are different in Prémare’s translation. It
showes his ingenuity when he started the eight odes with Ching Chih. When Matteo Ricci and his
colleagues endeavoured to spread Christianity in China in the sixteenth century, they found
Tien(天) and Shangdi（上帝）in Chinese classics and expounded them as equivalent to Deus (God)
in Christianity. With this strategy they succeeded in winning the support of the Chinese Emperor.
In 1675, the Qing Emperor Kangxi wrote two characters “敬天”（Reverence Tien）on a board and
explained : “What I wrote Reverence Tien is the same as Reverence the Lord.”① In this way the
Qing court officially permitted and approved the Christianity that was spread by the European
Jesuits in China. After that the learning of Tien（天学）became another word for the Christian
theology. It is said that an imitated board with the two characters 敬天 was hung to the front of
every Catholic church at that time, to remind people to pay reverence to Tien, which is a synonym
for Deus of Christianity②. Prémare put Ching Chih at the very beginning and laid the keynote for
the cosmos consituted by the eight odes : Tien is the highest principle. Tien here not only refers to
the sky above our head, but also to the creator of the universe, the God.
In short, King and kingship is the outward subject of the eight odes, while there is an implied,
a metaphorical subject in them, which is the Christian theology with reverence Tien as its principle.
This is the most important point in the French version of the eight odes from The Book of Poetry,
ingeniously and tactfully put forward by Prémare.
II. the name of Tien（天）and Shangdi (上帝)
Joseph de Prémare is a representative Jesuit scholar in the Figurism movement of the
eighteenthe century. As a student of Joachim Bouvet (1656-1730), Prémare inherited this method
and applied it in his study of the Chinese classics, searching what might match the Christian
doctrines. His important works of Figurism include Selectae quaedeam vestigial praecipuorum
religionis christinanae dogmatum ex antiques Sinarum libris eruta (1712-24) and the Real
Meaning of Confucianism (《儒教实义》, 1715-18). In his French translation of the Orphan of the
Zhao Family (《赵氏孤儿》), there is little connection with Figurism, as it is a drama of the Yuan
dynasty. While the Book of Poetry is a classic of pre-Qin China, Prémare’s translation of the eight
odes shows that he was apparently influenced by Figurism. As literary translation is a kind of
trans-cultural creative treason③, there are many points worthwhile to be discussed in Prémare’s
translation. In the following, we are going to analyze the French translation of the words Tien(天),
Di（帝）, Shangdi（上帝）, Huangtian Shangdi（皇天上帝）which appear very often in the eight
odes, and to explore Prémare’s endeavour in merging Christianity and the primitive religion in
ancient China.
①
Wenqin Zhang, Wu Yushan and Catholic Church with Chinese Characteristics (Beijing : Zhonghua Publishing,
2008), 210.
②
Tiangang Li, the Encounter Between Confucian Classics and Theology (Beijing : New Star Publishing, 2007),
75.
③
Tianzhen Xie, “Literature Translation: a cross-cultural creative treason”, in Comparative Literature and
Translation Studies (Shanghai : Fu Dan University Publishing, 2011) , 185-193.
4
1. Tien (天)
In the eight odes, Tien appears 21 times, Tienxia (天下) once, Haotien（昊天）6 times, and
Huangtien (皇天) once. The following table showes the French translation of these expressions :

Table 1
Tien Haotien Huangtien Tienxia
le Ciel 19 3
Maître de l’Univers 1
Le Tien suprême 1
Le Seigneur 1
L’auguste Ciel 1
l’Univers 1

Among the above translation, if le Ciel indicates the material sky, Maître de l’Univers、Le
Seigneur have obvious reference to the God of Christiantiy. So do Le Tien suprême and L’auguste
Ciel. This proves that Prémare took Tien as God when transalating the odes from the Book of
Poetry. If we take a closer look at the two, there are at least three similarities between the Tien in
the Book of Poetry and the God of Christianity : firstly, they have the ability of creating. As
written in T‘ien Tso, “The Tien made the lofty hill”. According to Christianity, God is the creator
of all things and creatures in the universe. Secondly, they both have the power of rewarding and
punishing. Like the God of Christianity, the Tien in the Book of Poetry has two important roles to
play, one is to give orders to wise persons, the other is to punish evil persons, and the latter
overtakes the former ①. Thirdly, they share the same personality of deity. In the ode Ching Chih,
the Tien is “remote on high”, “inspecting all we do” ② ; the only attitude that the earthly people
should take toward the Tien is reverence. Tien is L’auguste Ciel, or Maître de l’Univers : it is a
supreme existence with certain personality.
In short, as to the Tien, Prémare gave some translations like Maître de l’Univers, Le Tien
suprême, Le Seigneur and L’auguste Ciel, which are closely relevant to the God of Christianity.
2．Di（帝）, Shangdi (上帝)
In the eight odes Di (帝) appears 9 times, Shangdi（上帝）5 times, Huangyi Shangdi (皇矣
上帝) and Youhuang Shangdi ( 有皇上帝) once respectively. The following table showes
Prémare’s different translations.
According to table 2, the translation to Di and Shangdi is unified : le Seigneur is most
frequently used, sometimes some descriptive words such as Grand and suprême were added before
it; sometimes Prémare used le Très-Haut ; other times Prémare expounded Shangdi as le souverain
Maître du monde, l’Etre suprême, or le seul Souverain. The nature of supreme of Di or Shangdi
and its identity as governor of the universe was highlighted through such translation.
From the translations of Di and Shangdi, we could find the similarities and differences
between Tien and Di or Shangdi in Prémare’s opinion: similar as Tien, Shangdi would look for
someone virtuous and sacred as governor of the secular world. Compared to the Tien, the image of
Di or Shangdi is more like a concrete supervisor of the human world. The Tien is the Creator of

①
Nicolas Standaert, the Fascinating God : Challenge to modern Chinese theology presented by a text on the name
of God written by a 17th century Chinese student of theology (Roma : Pontificia Universidad Gregoriana, 1995),
110.
②
James Legge, trans. The Book of Poetry.
5
the world, while Di is Father of Tien with stronger personalities. The image of Tien is more
abstract. This shows that Di or Shangdi is closer to the God of Christianity than the Tien in
Prémare’s vision. Actually as early as in 1603, Matteo Ricci used Shangdi as the Chinese
translation of the Deus of Christinaty in his the True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven 《天主实义》
( ).
In 1633 the Society of Jesus had decided to abandon Shangdi and created Tianzhu (天主) for the
translation①. In 1704, the Pope Clement XI announced to prohibit to use Tien or Shangdi for the
translation of Deus, and approved to use Dousi (陡斯), a translation of the pronunciation. Prémare
did not use Deus to translate Di or Shangdi, but he used le Seigneur, the common address of the
Deus for Christians, which expresses his opinion about the religion of ancient China and his point
of view in spreading Christianity in China.
Table 2
Di Shangdi Huangyi Youhuang
Shangdi Shangdi
le Seigneur 5+2 1
le Très-Haut 2 2
Grand & suprême Seigneur 1
le souverain Maî
tre du monde 1
votre Majesté 1
Roi & Suprême Seigneur 1
l’Etre suprême 1
le seul Souverain 1

It may not be Prémare’s intention to apply Figurism in his translation of the Book of Poetry,
but his choice of the French words for Tien, Di and Shangdi indicates that he was influenced by it.
It also shows that Prémare was at Matteo Ricci’s side in the Rites Controversy which had lasted
for one century ; he admitted that Tien and Shangdi were equivalent to the God of Christinaty.
Some years before this, Yan Mo(严谟), a Chinese Catholic had supported the ideas of the
European Jesuits in his A Study on Di and Tian(《帝天考》) which was written “from the 1680s”②.
Prémare undoubtedly was in agreement with Yan Mo : to use Tien and Shangdi in referring to God,
and to respect the Chinese customs of worshipping Confucius and ancestors. This is evidential in
his letter to the French scholar Étienne Fourmont（1683-1745）on 3rd October 1728,

If only Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide could tell us directly that we can freely
explain to the Chinese that the Tien and Shangdi discussed by their ancient authors is
exactly the God in Christianity... ③

What is the fact ? Chen Lai indicates that the God of Yin and Shang in China was
an “irritable, changeable God having nothing to do with ethics”, while during the Zhou kingdom
the Tien became ethicized : the Tien “loves and listens to his people, and would take his people’s
willings as his own willings, and turn his willings into those of his people”, which makes sure that

①
Li, the Encounter Between Confucian Classics and Theology, 73.
②
Standaert, the Fascinating God : Challenge to modern Chinese theology presented by a text on the name of God
written by a 17th century Chinese student of theology, 25.
③
Knud Lundbaek, Joseph de Prémare (1666-1736), S.J. : Chinese Philology and Figurism, trans. Li Zhen, Luo
Jie (Zhengzhou: Daxiang Publishing, 2009), 32.
6
“if the Tien supervises himself, so will his people ; and if the Tien listens to himself, so will his
people”, in this way to realize the unification of the Tien and the people①. That is to say, in the
Zhou kingdom there was an ethicized relationship between the God and the people. This explains
the difference between the theological measurement of Christianity and the ancient Chinese
thought which had developed into a system of ethnics and later on, to Confucian humanism when
combined with Confucianism. Prémare might not see this ; he took Tien and Shangdi as the God
of his religion : for him this is a strategy of spreading Christianity in China.
III. A Reference to the Bible Story
The fifth ode Chan Ang criticizes King You of the Zhou kingdom for spoiling his concubine
Pao Ssŭ and expelling his ministers. In the French translation it was titled Sur la perte du genre
humain and Prémare permitted the story of “the paradise lost” in the Bible into the text:

le Monde est perdu: le crime se répand comme un poison fatal: les filets du péchésont
rendus de toutes parts; & l’on ne voit point d’apparence de guérison.

Then the cause for the lost of the world was attributed to the woman :

Nous avions d’heureux champs, la femme nous les a ravis. Tous nous éroit soumis, la
femme nous a jetté dans l’esclavage. Ce qu’elle hait, c’est l’innocence, & ce qu’elle aime,
c’est le crime.

Who could be the woman who wants to know everything, if not Eve who picked and
ate the fruit from the tree of wisdom? It is not because the Tien that human beings became
depraved, but because of the woman :

Notre perte ne vient point du Ciel, c’est la femme qui en est cause.
Elle a perdu le genre humain: ce fut d’abord une erreur, & puis un crime.
Ni la femme se méler d’autre chose, que de coudre & de filer.

In the sixth ode Chêng Yüeh, Pao Ssŭ was also accused of ruining the kingdom:

D’où viennent donc tous les désordres qui naissent aujourd’hui? L’incendie va toûjours
croissant, & il est impossible de l’éteindre. Ah! Malheureuse Pao Seë, (a) c’est toi qui as
alluméle feu qui nous consume.

Here in the translation Prémare presented the story of King You’s concubine Pao Ssŭ, and at the
same time he alluded to the story of Eve of Eden in the Bible. The similarity of the two stories is
that the main character is a woman: Eve and Pao Ssŭ; but the causes of their fault are different:
Eve violated the rules in Eden through eating the forbidden fruit; Pao Ssŭ made King You lose his
kingdom just for gaining her smile. Prémare transplanted the story of Eve through the translation
and added in it a strong taste of religious preaching.
Besides, there are many other traces of Prémare’s Christian world view in the translation. In
the original ode of Chan Ang, it says that the world was in a “chaos”（乱）; Prémare translated 乱

①
Lai Chen, A Collection of Chen Lai’s Speeches (Beijing : Jiuzhou Publishing, 2014), 8-9.
7
into “notre perte”, which was repeated more than once in the translation : L’homme s’est perdu ;
& l’Univers est sur le point de sa ruine. The choice of the words such as “perdu” for “none ;
disappearing”(亡) and l’Univers for le royaume(邦国) shows the influence of the translator’s
religion and world view on his translation.
Conclusion
As a cross-cultural translator and interpreter, the French Jesuit Joseph de Prémare translated
and interpreted the eight odes from the Book of Poetry with his religious background. In his
translation the original content and the Christian doctrines are mingled : for the original part, the
subject of king and kingship is both prominent in the original text and the translated one, in which
the image of King Ven was highlighted ; for the other part, the doctrines and teachings of
Christianity shine in the translation : such as the translations of the core concepts of Tien, Di and
Shangdi, the allusion of King to the Lord of Heaven, and the worldviews of a Christian. All these
show the endeavour of Joseph de Prémare in combining the ancient Chinese religious thought with
Christianity. His work provides researchers of nowadays, either Chinese or westerners, an
opportunity to reflect on their own tradition and culture.

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